WestJet introduces "Front of Cabin" seats with dynamic seat fee pricing
 

This just crossed my radar:

Effective October 2, 2019 WestJet introduced “front of cabin” seats within the Economy cabin on all aircraft types (excluding the 787). These seats are located between preferred seats and the exit row seats. Guests will now have the option to choose emergency exit, preferred, front of cabin or standard when seated in Economy. Fees will be dynamic and based on fare booked and other variants.

Well as long as they continue to let me choose those seats free of charge with Platinum status, I’m all for this. Should result in less people taking up all the starboard seats up front before I can snap one up myself haha.

Curious, why starboard?

Some of the planes have more legroom on the starboard side in the front. I think it’s like that until the exit row. I can never remember which actual planes are like that, so I just try to book there every time :)

Anyone know how much extra legroom these front of house seats have? The seatmaps on WJ and SeatGuru still show them all the same as the rest of the plane.

WestJet's own site only these extra legroom seats offer "a few more inches of leg room" and this may not be the case on all aircraft so it's really hard to know. MHO is the extra cost of these seats really isn't worth it compared to the standard seats behind the wing.

See Post #2 here:

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/west...-than-b-c.html

I think on the 737s it's 31" in standard, 33" in the extra legroom.

Somewhat pointless on the Q400s

Sounds like the "Speedy Boarding" concept at Easyjet, you pay a bit more you get the fronts seats and you board before first. I've used it a lot, it's a good system for just few more Euros.

If someone without WestJet status pays extra for these “Preferred” (but not “Premium”?!) seats in the Y cabin, what Boarding Group do they get?

With AC, DL and UA, passengers who pay extra for front-of-Y-cabin seating get preferential boarding.

is that the case with WS?

Only north of the equator, in Australia I always choose port.